Masterpiece
by idealskeptic
Summary: AH. Jasper and Alice have been the best of friends since the day they were born. They both wanted more but were too afraid to ask, neither believing they were good enough for the other. Alice gets married and Jasper has baby, both with other people. But they're young and they have time to fix things. Will they? one-shot


**Disclaimer: **All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

**A/N: **Finally another Jasper/Alice story from me!

The story was inspired by Madonna's song "Masterpiece" and a beautiful banner I adopted from the ever lovely FrozenSoldier (check it out on my blog – which is called Alternate Reality in Twilight and is on wordpress … google it! [since links aren't allowed, lol]).

Many thanks to the super sweet sweeneyanne for beta'ing this for me.

I hope you like it…

* * *

**MASTERPIECE**

She hired me as her wedding photographer.

I'd rather have been her groom.

I took the pictures. I immortalized her forever. I resigned myself to a lifetime without her.

On film, in pictures, in life … Alice Brandon was a masterpiece.

I was in the darkroom of the gallery when Peter, my business partner and the so-called pretty face of the business, came back to find me. Having learned his lesson about opening the door without my permission, he knocked first. "J, can I come in?"

I pulled the door open and let him in, shoving a handful of wooden clips into his hands before I went back to hanging wet prints on the drying line. "What's up?"

"Customer," he said, never wasting words with me – I always figured it was because he could say enough to charm the habit off a nun the rest of the time. "Wants to know if you do wedding photography."

"You know I don't do that shit anymore. Why didn't you just tell her that?"

Peter handed over two clips and shrugged. "She says she knows you from way back, fucker. Thought you might want to see her. She's hot, J," he added, leaning closer than strictly necessary and dropping his voice to a whisper.

"Yeah, and she's getting married, ass," I pointed out. "Give her Rosalie's info, she'll do weddings and owe me for sending her business."

"Did I mention she looks rich?" he asked, not giving up and irritating the hell out of me with his pestering. "Hot _and_ rich. Besides, she could be the maid of honor or some shit like that."

"Peter! No weddings!"

I turned back to my prints and cringed when I heard him sigh. I knew the sigh meant he was moving from being the lighthearted, badgering buddy and into being the tough, logical businessman. As always, I was right.

"Fine, J, but we've got bills to pay. If you want to keep this gallery, we need to bring in some cash. You said you aren't ready for a new show, so that's not happening. Fine. Just go talk to the girl. If she pays, and it sure as hell looks like she can pay, you get to keep your gallery." Peter set the last clips on the counter and stepped back, holding up his hands in surrender. "Your choice, man."

I pouted for a minute, as any true, self-respecting artist would do, then rearranged my face and my mood into something vaguely resembling approachability and walked out into the gallery.

The blood drained from my face the minute I saw her.

Alice Brandon was in my gallery.

I had not seen her once since we had graduated from college one year ago. Before then, I saw her almost every day of my life. After all, we'd been born in the same hospital on the same day and spent our first night of life in the nursery together.

I missed her.

"Jasper?" she said, a smiling spreading across her face as she held out her arms to me. "Jasper, I've missed you!"

I hugged her back and then let her go, reluctantly. "I missed you too, Alice. How are you?"

She hadn't let me go, keeping hold of my hand as she stepped back. "I'm good. I just got back from London and I heard you opened a gallery so I had to come and see it."

"London? Oh, right, you were working for Vivienne Westwood in London," I said, smartly guessing the wrong designer so I could pretend like I hadn't really followed her updates on Facebook as closely as I had. "Was that it?"

"Stella McCartney," she corrected me. "But I want to look at your pictures. Show me around."

I started to, but her phone rang so I left her to it in front of a black and white photo of the cave we'd discovered when we were little and went to find Peter.

"Is that _the _Alice?" he hissed as soon as I got close enough.

I glowered at him. "How do you know about Alice?" I demanded.

"Because I'm your friend," he replied, irritatingly unruffled by my sour mood. "And because my fiancée, who you set me up with, told me that Alice is the sweet, if slightly dense, girl that you've loved since you figured out you were a boy and she was a girl."

I decided then and there that Charlotte needed to pay dearly for that. She'd moved to town in the ninth grade and become my friend right away. It always seemed like she didn't do much more than tolerate Alice but, given what Peter had just told me, maybe it was because she saw what Alice didn't.

"Fine, whatever," I groaned. "That is _the _Alice. She's getting married. I saw it on Facebook. Go give her Rosalie's information. Please."

"Shit, J, I'm sorry," he said, finally grasping my problem. "What do you want me to tell her about where you went?"

I was about to suggesting raging diarrhea, for lack of a better idea, when Alice tapped my shoulder and squashed any plans of escape. "I have to run, Jasper, there's an emergency at the shop in London that I need to use my laptop to fix and I left it at my parents'," she said, an honest apology written in her eyes. "Could we meet for lunch at that café we used to always go to? I really want to catch up, and talk about you photographing my wedding, but catch up more. Are you busy for lunch?"

Ever the glutton for punishment, I shook my head. "No, lunch would be great. Twelve-thirty, like always?"

"Like always," she repeated, smiling as she leaned in and kissed my cheek.

Alice left, none the wiser to the fact that I came very close to breaking my hand when I punched the brick wall as the door closed behind her.

I forgot about lunch until Peter knocked on the darkroom door again and reminded me. I honestly wasn't dawdling or avoiding it, I just forgot.

I ended up at the restaurant at quarter to one.

Alice greeted me like a long lost friend, and that hurt more than anything.

"So you're getting married?" I said, cutting short my torture by jumping over all the silly small talk. "Is it anyone I know?"

"No. It's someone I met in London," she explained as she pushed a glass of iced tea toward me. "His name is James Smith. He's an investment banker."

Of course he was an investment banker. What else would he be?

"Is he American?" I asked when my voice returned. "Are you moving back to London?"

"He's British, so I only came back to have my wedding here. It was James' idea. We're going back to London after our honeymoon."

I swallowed a mouthful of tea and wished there was a way to stall time for a few minutes, but there wasn't, so I plugged on. "I don't really do weddings, Alice," I told her, desperately wishing that I hadn't agreed to come to the place where we'd spent so much happy time during high school and college. I should have kept business separate from personal things. "Do you remember Rosalie? She has a wedding business and does photography. I can give you her information."

Alice's face fell, and broke my heart. "Oh, okay," she said, her voice not much more than a whisper. "Um, yeah, give me Rosalie's information, but she probably won't be able to do it. But it's okay. It won't hurt to ask, right?"

"Why wouldn't she be able to do it?" I asked. Just like I always did, I was trying to make Alice happy, make her feel better, not let her be hurt.

Alice spun her spoon on the table and avoided my eyes. "Don't worry about it, Jasper. I'll find someone. You won't come to the wedding, will you? I hoped you would, but I feel like I shouldn't ask you now, so it's okay. I'm sorry."

"Because I said I don't do weddings?" I knew the answer to my own question, so I kept talking so she didn't have to answer. "Why wouldn't Rosalie be able to do it?"

"The wedding is Saturday, Jasper," she said, finally looking at me. "It's going to be small and quick, but it's Saturday. I'm sure someone who runs a wedding business is booked on Saturdays in May."

Then everything became clear. I bit my lip and took time to collect my thoughts. "That's why you came to me. You knew I was a photographer, but figured since I don't usually do weddings, I'd be free on Saturday."

"You make it sound so … cold." There was finally some genuine emotion in her voice. It was hurt, and it was the last thing I wanted, but it was there. "I want you at my wedding, Jasper. We've been best friends since we were born. You haven't forgotten that, have you?"

"Never," I told her firmly. "I'll never forget that, Alice. I'll photograph your wedding on one condition."

She looked happy; at least I'd accomplished that. "What condition?"

"I want to dance with you, one more time."

More than just looking happy now, she smiled. "I'll dance with you, Jasper. But you make it sound like it has to be the last time."

"It does, Alice. It does," I forced myself to say. "You're going to be a wife, James' wife. We have to say goodbye to dancing, all that sort of thing."

"Not our friendship," she said, the rollercoaster of emotions showing in her face. "We don't have to say goodbye to our friendship or our memories. Do we?"

"No, never." In truth, I resolved then and there to say goodbye to as much of our friendship as I could on the day she became Mrs. James Smith. I'd keep my memories, but I didn't want to watch her be happy, become a mother, and grow old and gray with someone else.

We finished lunch, talking the entire time about the very memories we didn't want to say goodbye to. When I'd paid the bill, carefully hiding my bruised hand from her, we set out for the park where the wedding would be so I could get an idea of what I'd be working worth.

It felt good to be in business mode. I knew it'd be harder on Saturday, but it was good practice.

"A suit?" Peter said when I emerged from my bedroom in the apartment we shared over my gallery – Charlotte refused to live with him until they were married, so I was stuck with him even though she was out of town for the next month to work at an orphanage in Mexico. "You're wearing a suit to photograph the wedding of the girl you want to marry?"

"I get to dance with the bride," I said, smiling grimly. "That calls for a suit. Speaking of, where's yours?"

"What? My suit?"

"Yes, your suit. I need an assistant, dumbass." If Peter saw through me, he didn't say so. I didn't really need an assistant. But Alice had said that I should bring someone and I needed a friend, not an assistant, so Peter was in as both. "You got something better to do?"

"No, fucker, I don't," he said, standing up and dropping the blanket that'd covered him from chin to toe. Underneath it, he was already in his suit. "Your cameras are packed so I'm ready when you are."

"Does never count?" I muttered, slinging my bag over my shoulder and heading for the door.

It didn't, and I wouldn't have wanted it to.

Alice and James' wedding was what weddings usually are, strangely sad affairs given that they signify future and hope and love.

I almost lost it a few times during the ceremony; only the knowledge that I'd let her down if I did, kept me together.

It was easier to concentrate at the reception. There were only a hundred guests, but there were three dozen conversations going on around me and Peter could stay closer to me without looking suspicious.

I did my best to pretend that I was photographing random people that I'd known for a couple hours instead of just Alice, and James. It didn't always work, but the effort was worth it. Developing the pictures would be harder. I'd already decided that I'd send the final product to Alice in Peter's capable, willing hands. That'd be my first step toward moving on.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

"I asked them to play our song," Alice said when I turned to her. "Do you want to dance now?"

Our song wasn't a song you usually danced to, even if it was Madonna. But "Nothing Fails" was me and Alice in a nutshell; not being able to see love where it was, not telling when it was there, a friendship never failing even through the tears and hardship.

"Congratulations, Alice," I whispered in her ear as the song came to an end. "I wish you all the happiness in the world. Remember that."

When she started to say something, I kissed her cheek and turned her back to her new husband. That was all I could handle.

Over the next six weeks, the time before I was due to deliver Alice and James' photographs, Peter, Charlotte, and even Rosalie tried to set me up with a parade of girls. None of them were Alice, of course, but I picked one that seemed the least like her as possible and asked her out on a second date.

Maria was everything Alice wasn't. She was tall, curvy, tanned, overly confident, loud, self-centered, poor, determined, and moody. She was the perfect antidote for missing Alice. I'm pretty sure she knew she was a replacement for someone, but she didn't seem to care. As long as I bought her things, paid attention to her, and had sex with her, she was more than happy.

"Are you sure she's not twelve?" Maria asked on my last day developing and printing Alice's wedding photos – against my own better judgment, I'd let her in the darkroom with me. "She doesn't look very old."

"We were born on the same day in the same hospital," I told her, for possibly the twentieth time. "She's the same age as me, Maria."

She clucked her tongue and mumbled something in Spanish before snaking her arms around my waist. "Don't worry, you have me now. A woman in every sense of the word," she whispered her breath hot on my neck.

When I felt her lips attack my throat, I turned in her arms and lifted her to sit on the low counter on the other side of the room – there weren't many places we hadn't had sex, but the counter in the darkroom needed to be checked off the list. I ran my hand up and under her short skirt, I wasn't surprised that she wore no panties, and put my own mouth on her breast. She didn't take long to get undressed and I absently wondered what odd place she'd lost her tank top in this time.

I kept one hand busy beneath her skirt while the other massaged her breasts. She kept her hands lower, deftly pulling off my belt before she cupped her hands around me. She was soaking wet in the same second I was rock hard. When I looked away for a minute to push some files further down the counter before they got knocked off, Maria put her legs on my shoulders. She was, to put it mildly, _flexible_ when there was something she wanted.

Still holding me in her hands, she guided me forward to just where she wanted me. "Make me scream," she demanded, leaning forward to wrap her arms around my waist.

I plunged into her and started rocking back and forth with such speed that she almost came off the counter a few times. And then she came in all the right ways, screaming just as she'd wanted to do – at least until she bit my shoulder hard enough to drive me over the edge. My legs were like jelly when I finally finished releasing into her. When she moved her legs off my shoulders, we both lost our balance and ended up toppling to the floor.

"Sorry, Jasper," she purred, giggling as she stroked me one last time. "Come to my apartment tonight. I have to go to work now. I'll be thinking about you all day."

And then she was gone, rushing out of the darkroom in a blur of tanned legs in a short skirt.

"In the darkroom?" Peter groaned in lieu of a normal greeting when he found me straightening the files on the counter a few minutes later. "Damn it, man, can't you keep it out of the gallery? You have a fucking bedroom up there, you know."

"You set me up with Maria," I snapped back. Given what I'd just done, you'd have thought I'd have been in a better mood but sex with Maria was just that … sex. It satisfied a need and distracted me for a few seconds. "You should be happy I'm getting to know her better."

"Getting to know her better my ass," he muttered as he grabbed some paper from the storage cabinet. "And I didn't set you up with her; I only said you should go out with her when Rosalie set you up with her. Get it right, brother."

I ignored him and went back to packaging the rest of Alice's pictures. She wasn't going to be able to come back to the US to get them, so I was saved from having to do any more than ship them to London.

Little things could make me very happy.

The pregnancy test came back positive two weeks later.

Maria said from day one that she wasn't ready for our relationship to change, but she was going to have the baby. I wasn't totally sure it mattered to me if she did or not, but I'd take responsibility for what I'd done. There was never any question about that.

I went to every doctor's appointment with her and we came to an agreement about splitting the bills for it all. The doctor's appointments were when we saw each other the most. She still worked as a Spanish teacher at a nearby high school and I'd taken a job as a photographer for the local newspaper to supplement what little income I got from the gallery. We were busy, but it was more than that. Now that she was pregnant, we weren't just dating and having sex – it was much more complicated than that and neither of us were comfortable with what it'd become.

In hindsight, it was probably stupid and juvenile from beginning to end.

Maria didn't have family in town so she stayed with me in the weeks before she was due to give birth. That, at least, seemed both fair and wise. Peter had finally moved in with Charlotte so I took his vacated sofa bed and let Maria have the bedroom. She was taking a nap there when the Edward Masen came into the gallery one hot summer afternoon when the newspaper didn't need me to photograph prized jars of peaches at the fair.

Edward had been in the same year as me and Alice in school but he'd been much more her friend than mine. He was in the band and read a lot of books while I was a jock and broke a lot of rules. Still though, we'd randomly kept in touch since high school.

After the customary man hug and small talk about the good old days, I showed him around the gallery. "Are you looking for something particular," I asked him, "or are you just here to catch up?"

"Both. My fiancée, Bella, is from Arizona and she said she misses the cactus and the creosote. Her birthday is coming up so I thought I'd find something cactus and creosote related for her. Got anything like that? I bet you don't."

"And you'd lose your money, just like you always used to do," I said, motioning him to follow me to the back of the gallery. "I took a bunch of pictures on a trip to the Grand Canyon last summer. There's got to be some cactus and creosote in there. If you've got somewhere to be, I can call you later and let you know if I found anything."

"Nope, I'm free until seven," he said as he peered over my shoulder. "So, what's new with you?"

I had a brief mental debate with myself while I thumbed through boxes of prints. It was pretty much a given that any exchange of 'what's new' between the two of us would result in me finding out something about Alice. I just had to decide how much I wanted that. On the other hand, I'd already found out that he had a fiancée from Arizona – maybe it could be limited to her and Maria. Not likely, but maybe.

"I'm having a kid," I announced bluntly. "Any day now."

"Congratulations," he said, shaking my hand but making the word sound more like a question than an exclamation. "This is going to sound rude and nosy however I say it, so I'll just spit it out - feel free to tell me to go fuck myself - did you get married?"

I ignored his offer and moved on to a different box. "No. We've already got a custody agreement all settled. It was never supposed to be more than sex, since we're being blunt." I found the pictures from the Grand Canyon and pulled them out, motioning Edward to a large, mostly clear table. "Congratulations on your engagement, by the way. When's the big day?"

"Three months from today. You'll come, won't you? You can bring your kid, or a date, or both."

"Yeah, sure, send me the details and I'll be there with bells on." I stopped in the middle of spreading the prints when a thought occurred to me. "How come you weren't at Alice's wedding?"

"Out of town," he said, shrugging to show it couldn't be helped. "That must've been hell for you, having to be her photographer."

"Something like that," I muttered. "Anyway, see anything you like? I can change the size on most of them and play around with the coloring if you want."

He picked out a shot of the desert sunset highlighting both a cactus and a creosote bush that I'd taken with an old camera, so the coloring had come out sepia and, for lack of a better word, desert-y. "This is perfect, just as it is," he declared. "Bella's going to love it. Can you frame it?"

I could, and he followed me around the gallery as I worked. Naturally, the conversation eventually turned to Alice. It was me who asked about her.

"She's good," Edward hedged. "She and James work a lot, but she seems happy in London. She asks about you."

"Tell her I'm fine," I said as I finished the frame. "There you go, all set. I hope Bella likes it."

"She will. Good luck with the baby, Jasper, and keep in touch." He lifted the package and walked toward the door. "See you around, man."

Maria went into labor that night.

Eighteen intense hours later, I had daughter.

Maria wanted to sleep before we named her, so I sat in the rocking chair in the hospital room and held her while her mother slept. She was like a tiny angel in my arms. She didn't look more like either Maria or I, not that I could tell anyway.

She was simply perfect.

When Maria woke up, she told me she was moving to Albuquerque and didn't want to take the baby with her. She told me she'd sign over all rights to me, or we could give her up for adoption.

I couldn't give her up.

So I became a single father to the little girl I named Nettie.

Nettie kept me busy enough over the next three months that I hardly had time to think about Alice.

I kept my job at the newspaper, traipsing around the county that summer to photograph every fair, fundraiser, auction, and tourist destination that was to be found. I also opened the gallery to feature other artists for the first time. That was more Peter's doing than mine, he was the one who came up with the plan to charge artists for the privilege of displaying their work at my gallery for a week – I did have prime real estate right on the lakefront in the artsy part of town – and then taking a portion of what was sold. No one complained, and I made enough money to keep the gallery open and, more importantly, keep Nettie in diapers.

The other plus side was that neither job was a forty hour a week, nine-to-five job so I didn't have to put Nettie in daycare. Most days, I took her with me. Balancing a car seat, a crying baby, and a camera wasn't always easy, but I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

When I couldn't take her with me, she stayed at home where her Uncle Peter and Aunt Charlotte, now a freelance writer, both watched and happily spoiled her.

The only blip in my happiness was the day that I got back from taking pictures of a reunion of World War II veterans and Charlotte looked sort of like someone had died. Nettie was gurgling happily in her bouncy chair, so I went quickly from worried to suspicious.

"The invitations for Edward's wedding came today," Peter explained when Charlotte only shook her head sadly. "That's what's with her."

"I thought you liked Edward," I pointed out, directing my question to Charlotte. "You've met Bella, haven't you? Don't you like her?"

"It's not that." She turned her laptop around and pointed at the screen. "It's this."

Bella's maid of honor, someone named Jessica, had apparently organized an online RSVP list for the bridal shower. It didn't take me long to see what was bothering Charlotte.

Alice had already RSVP'd that she'd be there.

She was going to be at the wedding, too.

"We're adults, Char, it'll be fine," I said, turning away from the screen and scooping Nettie out of her chair at the same time as I grabbed my own invitation. "Don't you dare not go because of me. I'm sending back my RSVP right now."

My tiny date and I went to the wedding with Charlotte and Peter.

The wedding was a little bigger than Alice's had been but we still looked for seats as far back as we could find. If Edward bugged us, I had a good excuse – crying babies required quick exits from solemn, quiet weddings.

I freely admitted to myself that I was watching for Alice. I was done lying to myself, so I owned it.

She came alone.

Karma's a bitch and, by the time she arrived, there was only one seat left – directly in front of me.

My dreams of blending in went up in flames when Nettie, squirming in my arms, let out a squeal that probably pierced some eardrums of anyone not used to her squeals, i.e. me, Charlotte, and Peter.

Alice turned around and I watched as her face lit up when she found the source of the noise. "Oh, Jasper, she's such a sweet little angel," she exclaimed, reaching out her hand and letting Nettie grab hold of her finger. "Edward told me you had a baby. I thought about calling or emailing or sending you something for her, but I decided I'd rather do it in person here. Maybe not at the wedding, but in town. Soon. I'm sorry, I'm rambling. What's her name?"

I could tell that she was nervous. Alice always talked a lot when she was nervous. My old habit of wanting to make her happy, comfortable, and ensuring she felt safe kicked in automatically and I smiled, scooting forward in my chair so that she and Nettie didn't have to reach as far for each other – I also ignored the looks Charlotte and Peter were giving me. "Nettie, she's Nettie Whitlock. Her hand might be sticky, but it's just the soap I used to wash off Charlotte's lipstick after she got ahold of the tube and squished it."

"Oh, you're not sticky, are you, honey?" she cooed. "You're just a sweet little baby girl, aren't you?"

Nettie was more than thrilled with the attention, making little baby coos right back at Alice.

"Are you just here for the wedding?" I asked her, desperate to know the answer to at least that before the ceremony started. It helped, too, to have Nettie as a buffer or sorts between us.

Something flashed in her eyes before she focused on the baby buffer again. "No, I moved back a week or so ago. I'm going to try and start my own fashion line from here."

I knew she didn't want to talk about that then, so I stopped and just let her play with Nettie until the ceremony started. I was still ignoring Charlotte's pointed looks – Peter had quickly moved on to almost complete disinterest in the whole thing.

Alice asked if she could sit with us at the reception and, before Charlotte could protest and hurt her, I agreed. After all, we'd already claimed the smallest table and Charlotte and I were, aside from Edward, Alice's best friends at the wedding.

"Behave and be nice," I hissed at Charlotte while Alice stood up to hug Jessica.

"Fine," she grumped. "Torture yourself some more, see what I care. I suppose you wouldn't mind if I made just enough small talk to find out why she moved back here."

"No, I wouldn't," I admitted bluntly. "In fact, please do."

Charlotte wasn't one to give in without a reason, but she gave in. "Alright, I will. I've missed her too. And I'm not saying I hope she's divorced already, but it'd be nice to have her back." When Peter gave her a complimentary pat on the back, she folded her arms over her chest and dropped her voice. "Even if I do have to beat her with a stick to get her to open her damn eyes."

When Alice returned, I officially introduced her Peter, who I'd met after I graduated from college. She promptly congratulated him on meeting Charlotte's high standards and getting her to agree to marry him. Charlotte, to her credit, snickered and then accepted Alice's hug of congratulations like they'd been the best of friends for the last year or so when we all knew they'd hardly spoken at all.

"So you're all done working for Stella McCartney, are you?" Charlotte asked, being as direct as ever as she set about getting right to the heart of the matter. "Was it only supposed to be a year or two?"

"There wasn't really a set time," Alice replied. If she thought anything of Charlotte's pushy, nosiness, she didn't say. "It was just time to come home and try to make it on my own."

The conversation was interrupted then by some people we'd gone to school with coming over to ask Alice about London and high fashion. I watched Alice greet Kate and it didn't escape my notice that there was no ring on the third finger of her left hand. I tried not to stare, but it sparked something in me. I didn't want to think about it. For all I knew, the ring was damaged, lost, or simply didn't fit. That it wasn't there didn't mean that she was divorce and, if she was, it certainly wasn't something to be happy about.

"So are you married?" Alice asked as she sat back down. "Can I ask that?"

"You can, and I'm not," I told her. "I met Nettie's mother not long after your wedding, but she needed to do other things so I'm a single dad."

"That must be hard, with your gallery and everything," she said, letting Nettie hold on to her finger.

I shrugged and moved my chair a little closer to her. "It's not easy, and I've had to rearrange my priorities a little, but I wouldn't trade Nettie for the world." I knew Alice almost better than I knew myself and I could tell she wanted me to be the one to ask the questions. So I did. "Are you and James planning a family any time soon?"

There was sadness in her eyes when she answered, but I could hear the regret and, far more surprisingly, relief in her voice. "James and I are getting a divorce. I don't think we really knew each other well enough to get married. It was a mistake in the first place and I should have realized that. I feel so stupid."

I knew Charlotte was eavesdropping when she plucked Nettie out of my arms and carried her away. So I did the only the thing that made sense – I hugged Alice. "I'm so sorry to hear that, Alice," I told her while she was in my arms. "But you shouldn't feel stupid because you made a mistake, not as long as you fight through it and be sure it makes you stronger."

"Hey," she said, laughing softly as she broke our embrace, "that's my line."

"It's a good one," I told her, laughing along with her. "Why wouldn't I spit it back at you? Besides, you've been saying it since we were ten, it's not like I could forget it."

"Good point," she allowed. "I suppose you've always been my protector, so it shouldn't be surprising. Before you ask, he didn't hurt me. He just didn't love me and I didn't love him."

I shook my head and reached for my champagne glass. "I wasn't going to ask, Alice. It's not really my business. If you wanted to tell me, I knew you would. I'm glad you did, but I wasn't going to ask."

She swallowed her own champagne and sighed. "You're too good to me, Jasper. You always have been. I'm sorry if I've taken that for granted."

I knew then that she didn't really get it. She still didn't see that I didn't want to be just her protector and her good friend, I wanted more. But I loved her too much to say so. I loved her too much to take the chance of making her tell me she didn't feel the same way.

"You haven't, so stop worrying about that," I told her. "We can talk, have a heart-to-heart or whatever, later. For now, we should enjoy Edward's wedding. After all, who'd have thought geeky little Edward could find himself a pretty, sweet girl like Bella?"

That made her smile again, especially since I'd deliberately raised my voice, knowing that the newlyweds were standing right behind me.

"Nice, Jasper," Edward laughed as Alice stood up to hug Bella. "Besides, Bella has assured me that I'm neither geeky nor little anymore."

Bella's smile was warm and genuinely happy as she hugged me. "He's not, you know. I think he's very sexy now."

"Oh, God, me too," I said dramatically, kissing her cheek. "You took the words right out of my mouth. I'm jealous of him actually – mostly because he found a sexy girl like you willing to marry him."

"Thank you, Jasper," she said as her cheeks flamed red. "We'll all have to get together when we get back from our honeymoon in Brazil. You too, Alice?"

Alice nodded quickly. "Absolutely, but it looks like you've got a lot of people to greet, so you'd better get away from Jasper's teasing for now."

I wasn't alone with Alice long after Edward and Bella left – Charlotte carried Nettie back over and deposited her in my arms. "She pooped," she announced. "And I am so not changing a diaper in this dress so she's all yours, Daddy."

I, along with Nettie – my buffer baby, met Alice for a picnic lunch in the park a week later.

During the week between the wedding and the picnic, we hadn't spoken beyond texting each other and I was glad for that because it gave me time to organize my thoughts and feelings toward Alice before I saw her face-to-face again. I would never dream of making her rush into anything, but I had to be clear with myself for my own sanity, no matter what happened.

I came to the same conclusions I always did – if Alice asked me to drive to Las Vegas and marry her, I would. If she asked me to walk her down the aisle to marry some other guy, I would do that too.

Charlotte was going to very unhappy with me, unless of course Alice declared she felt the same way about me. Then Charlotte would instantly forget every problem she had with the entire thing.

"Smile," I told Alice just a second before I snapped a picture of her holding my squirming daughter.

"Does your daddy pester you with that camera, sweet thing?" she cooed to the baby. "He's done that all his life, believe me. Don't you worry, though, he taught me how to take good pictures so I'm going to steal that camera later and take lots of pictures with you and him."

I set the camera down where she could reach it when she decided to be a thief and laid back on the blanket we'd spread on the grass. "She's three and a half months old, Alice; she didn't understand a word you just said."

She stuck her tongue out at me, they both did, but it was only Alice who spoke. "Maybe not, but she'll understand one day when she sees pictures of herself and her daddy, not just pictures her daddy took of her with other people. Auntie Alice will explain it all then."

I pushed myself up on my elbow. "Auntie Alice?"

Alice dropped her eyes. "Well, I hope I get to be a part of Nettie's life, to watch her grow up, but I don't know if you want that."

"I do, Alice, I do," I assured her. "We literally grew up together, how could I not want you in my daughter's life? If you weren't in her life, you wouldn't be in mine."

She didn't answer until she'd set the sleepy Nettie back in her car seat, then she looked at me. "I screwed up, Jasper," she murmured, a sadness that I didn't like in her eyes. "I really screwed up."

"By marrying James?"

"Well, that too, but that's not the important part where I screwed up," she said, fisting and unfisting the blanket in her fingers. "Do you want to know the first time I screwed up?"

I watched her closely. "Do I?"

Alice took a deep breath and then she told me the blunt, honest, harsh truth – a truth I very much wanted to here. "The first time I screwed up was when I realized I was a girl and you were a boy and I didn't do anything about it."

I didn't know how to answer that, so I didn't answer it. I could only hope against hope that she would explain.

When she did, I was glad I was lying down because my head started to spin in tandem with my racing heart.

"You've been in love with me since then, haven't you?" she whispered. When I nodded, she huffed in frustration. "Why didn't you ever ask me out?"

"I thought you just wanted to be friends," I said in my own defense, even though I was frustrated at myself for not realizing she could have felt the same as I did. "You flirted with every other guy in school but you never flirted with me. I didn't want to make you uncomfortable by asking you a question you weren't ready, or just plain didn't want, to answer."

Alice threw herself onto her back next to me, threading her fingers through mine just like we'd done a thousand times on picnics. "You should have," she declared. "I apparently needed a good smack in the head to get me pointed in the right direction."

"You make it sound like you got a good smack somewhere," I commented. "James?"

"That was just a little nudge." I almost thought she stopped talking entirely, leaving me to wonder about the real smack, but then she started speaking again. "The smack came in two parts: first, when we danced at my wedding, I saw the sadness and longing in your eyes but I denied it had anything to do with me until the second part came, when I walked into Edward's wedding and saw you holding Nettie.

"I was terrified, ridiculously terrified, that you'd got married without me knowing. I wanted to find her and scratch her eyes out for stealing you. Then I remembered that I was the one who'd got married, and that I'd been horrible enough to ask you to be the photographer." She drummed her fingers on her stomach as we lay there. "I did pretty well at rearranging myself and faking it the rest of the day, didn't I?"

She didn't want me to answer that question, I knew that. "You've been in love with me?" I asked instead. When she nodded, I asked why she'd never asked me out.

"Don't you see, Jasper?" she exclaimed in frustration, though she didn't sit up or let go of my hand. "You're too good for me. You were popular and you were the star of the baseball team and you could have had any girl you wanted. I didn't know why you'd want mousy, shy, crazy me. If I flirted with other guys, it was only to try and be as popular as being your friend made me, that's all. Maybe I was even practicing on the other guys to try and work up the nerve to flirt with you! Did you ever think of that?"

I answered as honestly as I could. "No." I rolled onto my side and looked at her. "You may say that I don't see myself right, but you've never seen yourself clearly either."

"Probably not," she agreed, sighing deeply. "So what do we do now?"

"I have a three month old daughter; doesn't that make you want to run away?"

Alice shook her head. "In your dreams."

"Nightmares," I corrected her. "In my nightmares."

"I'm getting divorced," she said, nodding slowly in acknowledgement of my correction. "Does that make you think I'm flighty and stupid? Or only in my nightmares?"

"Nightmares, again." I lay back down and looked up at the blue sky covered with fluffy white clouds, waiting for some sort of inspiration to strike and tell me the right words to say.

I'd just idly decided that a passing cloud looked like a four-leaf clover; it didn't really, when Alice spoke. "Should we call this our first date?" she whispered with a wary hopefulness in her voice.

"Yes, please," I said eagerly, before I could stop myself. I laughed, unembarrassed, when she smiled brightly. "Did you like it enough to go on a second date with me?"

She rolled onto her side this time, leaning in to kiss me. "Yes, please."

We hired a wedding photographer.

I was her groom.

I was in the pictures. Our love was immortalized forever. I got to live a lifetime with her.

On film, in pictures, in life … Alice Brandon _is_ a masterpiece.

**THE END**


End file.
